


we said forever but forever wouldn't wait for us

by acezukos (purplefennels7)



Series: burn bright, burn fast [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Introspection, M/M, jj's desertion except make it pianjeong, not NOT canon compliant, timeline? what timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/acezukos
Summary: The letters stop coming at the end of the summer. It takes months for Piandao to worry, but by then it'll be years until they see each other again, and that reunion doesn't go quite as expected either.or: the desertion; before, during, and after.
Relationships: Jeong Jeong/Piandao (Avatar)
Series: burn bright, burn fast [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924690
Comments: 24
Kudos: 148





	we said forever but forever wouldn't wait for us

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by @ikkii and a wonderful anon on tumblr asking me about the desertion and i wrote out like 1k worth of answers for each and went Hm. This Should Be A Fic and now here we are.
> 
> set in the same universe as [spark from a flame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090770) but u don't strictly have to have read that to get this (although some of the history will make more sense and/or hit harder if you have)
> 
> title from "last young renegade" by all time low aka the no. 1 canon!pianjeong song (listen..."we used to be such a burning flame/now we're just smoke in the summer rain" come ON)

The letters stop coming at the end of the summer. In the last one, and it’ll take months before he knows that it’s the last, Jeong Jeong talks about a mission to the southern shores, about an officer who had smuggled a cat aboard one of the ships, and promises to come visit as soon as he can. His characters are as sloppy as usual, like his thoughts had been running a little faster than his brush. At the bottom of the page, small like he’s trying to hide it but far too neat to be anything less than purposeful, he’s written _I miss you._

Piandao smiles when he reads them, running his fingertips over the bold strokes. _I miss you, too,_ he writes at the top of his reply, imagining the blush spreading across Jeong Jeong’s cheeks, still as firey as it’d been that first summer even though he’s managed to stop spilling flames every time they so much as brushed.

The postmaster winks at him when he drops the letter off, addressed to the Southern Fleet’s newest base. It’s the worst kept secret on base that Piandao is involved with the Admiral, even though the extent of said involvement takes a different form depending on who you talk to, what phase the moon is in, and the time of day. Lee’s probably guessed by now - namely, that Piandao has been in love with him nearly ever since he’d set off stolen fireworks for him in the middle of the night two years ago. 

Piandao calls him _Jay Jay,_ sometimes, when he’s sure no one is around to hear it. Jeong Jeong always flushes right down past the collar and grumbles about _dignity,_ but Piandao knows he loves it. His most treasured possession is a letter he’d gotten in the dead of winter, a rambly bit of nothing about how strange snow is and how can waterbenders even stand living in ice all the time. He saves every letter he gets, tucking them together in a close-wrapped bundle in the corner of his bunk, but this one is special. At the end he’s signed it _your Jay Jay,_ with a messy postscript that reads _if you laugh I’ll gut you. And I’ll know if you do._

Piandao doesn’t laugh, but on a whim presses his mouth to the paper right over the words, wondering whether Jeong Jeong had done the same before sealing it. Really, under the abrasive exterior he’s a secret romantic, and that would be the exact sort of thing he’d do.

He doesn’t get a response for a month. This isn’t worrying, at least, not at first. The Earth Kingdom is a big place, and Jeong Jeong is terribly busy all the time and for all his romance he’s awful at answering correspondence promptly. It takes another month before he starts thinking there’s something more behind the silence than overwork, and by then it’s far, far too late.

The first whispers he hears, he ignores. Usually, when people are whispering about the Admiral they’re also whispering about him, and he’s become very good at tuning it all out. He does notice that more people than usual are giving him side-eyes in the mess hall, and the sympathy in the glances is new but he has no idea why it’s there. It takes until Lee pulls him aside in the barracks, looking nervously from side to side before leaning in to whisper.

“Piandao, do you...do you _know?”_ he says urgently, and doesn’t elabourate, looking expectantly at him. Piandao shakes his head, feeling bemused and a bit cornered.

“Know what? Agni, why is everyone I know so dramatic? You, Jeong Jeong-”

“About him,” he hisses, voice dropping another step quieter, and Piandao feels a foreboding weight lodge itself in his throat.

“What about Jeong Jeong, Lee-” Lee shuts his eyes, looking pained.

“Piandao,” he says, and his voice is flooded with pity, and Piandao wants to reach out and shake him and yell to just spit it out already. “They’re saying...he’s deserted.”

Piandao blinks at him, then down at where he’s put a hand on his arm, as if to comfort.

“Deserted?” he says. He feels nothing. Cold, maybe. “That’s not possible.”

“I’m sorry. It might not be true, you know how it is with gossip-” But Lee’s voice is empty. Piandao looks at him, hands behind his back.

“What are you not telling me?” Another flash of that terrible pity. He takes his hands out from behind his back and hands Piandao a rolled-up piece of parchment. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

Piandao’s hands are perfectly steady as he grasps the edge of the paper and unrolls it. He thinks he already knew, maybe, what he was going to see. 

Jeong Jeong stares back at him, eyes narrowed, the high collar of his uniform brushing his chin. The twin scars over his right eye are stark black slashes down the parchment.

_Wanted, for desertion of the Fire Nation. Dead or alive._

“Is this some kind of joke?” he snaps, shoving the paper back into Lee’s chest and pushing past him, stopping at the door of the barracks. “The penalty for desertion is death, don’t you know that?”

“I know,” Lee says, and doesn’t go after him when he leaves.

He ends up at the top of the wall, identical to the one at the old base where he’d been that first time, watching the fleet sail over the horizon. The sea had been calm, then, incipient dawn painting it a mirror of gold, the ripple of a diving bird the only disturbance for miles. Today it storms, clouds clinging low and heavy to the tops of the whitecaps and promising rain on the way, and the spray of the waves reaches up nearly to Piandao’s vantage point. 

The wind is worse up here and he’s only in his uniform tunic, and shivers rise along his bare arms but he isn’t cold, not like cold usually feels. It’s like he’s been frozen through, numb to everything else.

 _Deserted._ He forms the word in his mouth, holding it there like a mouthful of soup against the chill. The ultimate betrayal. Punished by summary execution.

He’d never even said a word. Piandao catches onto that thought, like bumping over a rut in the path. He’d never said anything about being unhappy, not past the usual about expectations and statuses, and Piandao takes every opportunity to remind him that he’s a person and not just a prodigy and he thought he’d been doing enough.

He knows they were good. They’d been in love. They’ve said the words, even. Not often, but enough. He’s never doubted those things, and even now he doesn’t. Those are the indomitable sorts of truths. The sky is blue, firebenders take power from the sun, and he loves Jeong Jeong and Jeong Jeong loves him. 

But now he’s gone. It’s the truth. He knows Lee isn’t lying. He’d just wanted to believe it, if only for a minute, with that wanted poster staring him in the face. _Dead or alive._ And Jeong Jeong will die anyway, either way. The execution might even be kinder.

“Hey, you can’t be up here,” comes a voice, and he turns to see the soldier on watch poking their head out of the guardhouse. He nods and moves towards the staircase down. “Wait, aren’t you the Admiral’s-”

“No,” Piandao says, and walks away. 

He can’t stop rereading that last letter, in the next days. Searching for a sign, just any little sign that Jeong Jeong had already been thinking about deserting when he’d written it, some little bit of code he’d missed telling him where he was going, what he was thinking. Did he not know that Piandao would’ve gone with him if he’d only asked; he holds just as much love for the army as it does for him, which is to say very little indeed. 

So he keeps sending letters, addressing them just with Jeong Jeong’s name, no destination, no return. _Where are you?_ he writes in one, and signs it with the design on the pommel of his sword. _Are you alright? Please just tell me,_ in the next, and doesn’t sign it at all. _I don’t even need to know where you are. Just that you’re okay. Please._

The postmaster looks pained every time he drops off another one, but he always takes it and lets Piandao watch him put it in with the batch for the morning shipment. Piandao tries to soften the glare he knows is on his face because the man’s just doing his job, and he can’t exactly mail a letter to someone that isn’t supposed to exist. 

He has no such compunctions when the captain calls him up after drills, holding up his most recent letter stamped with the red mark of the censors. 

“Your _association_ was tolerated because it was within regulations,” he says, and the poison in ‘association’ is barely hidden. “This is toeing the line of treason, and we won’t be this lenient next time.” Piandao’s palms itch for the hilt of his sword; even the little dagger at his belt would do, or no weapon at all, just his fists. He settles for a salute instead. 

He could just walk away now. Leave. Sneak out in the middle of the night, steal a ship and try to find Jeong Jeong, wherever he may have ended up. He even packs a bag; a few nondescript pants and tunics, his whetstone and sword oil, a few days’ food and water smuggled out of the mess hall, and Jeong Jeong’s letters, carefully bundled up and wrapped for protection. It burns a brand into his side at night, tucked under his blankets so it won’t be seen because a travel pack is nothing incriminating on its own, but the mere possession of those letters is now a high crime.

In the end, he doesn’t go. He takes everything out, returns the bag to its hook over his bed. The letters go under his pillow, though, and sometimes he brushes the rough edges of the parchment when he can’t sleep in the middle of the night, and tries to tell himself that there’ll be another one coming, any day now.

There isn’t, of course, and hoping is like a knife in the chest, but sometimes he thinks he’ll drown if he doesn’t. 

Lee worries about him. He keeps bringing him food even though Piandao hasn’t even been neglecting to eat, and asking if he’s alright, and if he wants to talk. Piandao appreciates it, he really does, and honestly he wouldn’t _mind_ talking about it but he knows that if he starts the whole thing will come pouring out, and he isn’t just going to dump it all on Lee’s shoulders. So he gives him as sincere of a smile as he can, and tells him he’s fine, and pretends not to notice when Lee shakes his head when he turns away.

People still whisper, because of course they do, and the way they say _the deserter_ and _the traitor_ is exactly the same, down to the tone, as the way they’d used to say _the admiral, the prodigy_ and all Piandao can ever think is how much Jeong Jeong hated that. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he sneaks out to anywhere he’ll be alone. The courtyards, sometimes, but none of them feel quite as right as the one they’d used to spar in; the roofs, other days, but all he can think of is dark eyes and sharp grins and fireworks in the nighttime. 

And there he’ll say Jeong Jeong’s name, just his name, out loud. Again, and again, like a mantra, like a heartbeat, until any other word would’ve faded into meaningless syllables but it’s still always just _Jeong Jeong._ He was always so much more than what people said about him, and Piandao’s still convinced that he had a reason for leaving. 

With this war, with this Fire Lord, though, there’s no clearing the name of a traitor. There can only be this. Only Piandao, who knew him as himself, as the beautiful boy - just a boy, really, only twenty-five when they’d met - who carries the scars of his past too heavy on his shoulders but stands tall in spite of them. He knows already that he’ll carry this torch until his dying day because there’ll never be anyone else for him. Not like this.

It feels like standing vigil, every few nights with his sword at his side and the letters tucked under his tunic, just over his heart. Him and Jeong Jeong have - had, now, they’ll never do anything like that again - snuck around enough Fire Nation bases to know how to stick to the shadows. Up until the day he’s honourably discharged he doesn’t think more than two people even catch a glimpse of him. 

Piandao leaves at the end of the year, along with Lee and about an eighth of the base, done with their mandatory service and free to move on with their lives. He wears the last letter under his uniform at the ceremony, one last little act of rebellion to have the words of a traitor brushing his skin as he salutes the General for the final time. 

Lee hugs him tightly and promises to write, but he’s off for an apprenticeship at his father’s shop and the few other people Piandao had associated with are also returning to their lives from before the army came along and swept them up. It’s only him, it seems, that’s unmoored.

He toys, again, with the idea of looking. He isn’t tied to the military anymore, which drastically reduces the chances of being written up for treason; he could disappear, too. But the world is a very big place, and he’s only one man. There’s no guarantee that Jeong Jeong is even in the Fire Nation anymore, and any search leaves a trail, and any trail can be followed.

He compromises. Starts sending letters again, signed with a fake name, carried by nondescript messenger hawks, addressed only with the character for _fire_ so they can’t be traced on either side. None of them get a response. None of them even leave the hawks’ backs, but every time he sees one returning he hopes right up until he feels the weight of the letter capsule and sees the unbroken wax on the seal. It’s like Jeong Jeong’s disappeared off the face of the earth, if even the hawks can’t find him. 

Not knowing, he thinks, might even be worse than him being dead. Not knowing could mean anything. 

He finds himself living in a constant state of dread. It only takes _one slip,_ and the next he’d hear of him would be the announcement of his execution. And that’d be it. Game over. Not even a chance for a goodbye. 

He’s never been _angry,_ not really. There are days, certainly, when he thinks he’s being stupid. They didn’t even break up officially, but Jeong Jeong just left and what other conclusion is he supposed to draw from that? Staying attached is just going to keep breaking his heart, every day until he dies because he’s never going to see him again but it isn’t like he can stop himself. He’s never been able to stop himself when it comes to this man. Not now, nor ever.

So he locks himself up. Rents a villa with his meager army pension and makes swords to sell in the nearby towns until he can afford to buy it, and when he isn’t in the forge he wanders through the rooms like a wraith. 

He isn’t keeping the world out - to the contrary, he takes on students like he’s trying to fill some kind of void, which he supposes he is. And when the rumour gets out that he’s selling to and teaching anyone, not just Fire Nation, when the army comes for him, he laughs, and lets them come. He fights with cold steel and the anger that bubbles in his throat because all of them are complicit in this, and a hundred soldiers fall and flee before him. The army never bothers him again.

No, he isn’t keeping the world out at all. He’s keeping himself _in._ Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from looking, and rue whoever dares to step in his way. He’d never forgive himself if he was the reason Jeong Jeong finally got caught. He can’t have his blood on his hands. He just can’t. 

It’s ironic, really, because he’s doing what he’d always dreamed of. Making swords, teaching, crossing borders as best he can in the middle of an intergenerational war because he’s never quite been one for nationalism after everything he’s seen. But he isn’t _happy._

He still feels the pull some days, to leave it all behind and strike out across the world all for a man he hasn’t seen in years. It makes him too restless to forge, too impatient for the arts, so instead he paces through the corridors and feels a great sort of melancholy sitting heavy in his bones. It’s never been about a legacy, but Jeong Jeong’s name will always be entwined with both the prodigy and the deserter. Remembered as what he hates and forgotten for who he is, and Piandao thinks that may be the greatest injustice. 

If he feels like this, someone with no stakes besides probably being a little more in love with him, still, than he should be, then how must Jeong Jeong be feeling, wherever he is? He’ll most likely die at the hands of the nation he clearly regrets ever killing for. He’ll be running for the rest of his life.

And then Piandao shows up at a White Lotus meeting and _there he is,_ long blue robes neatly pressed and folded and his hair a blinding shock of white, sitting primly on the ground across the table and sipping at a steaming cup of tea. 

“Piandao, are you quite alright?” Iroh asks, because he’s stopped just past the tent flap to stare. What is he _doing here,_ doesn’t he know he’ll die if he gets caught? It may be a secret society but people still know what the infamous deserter looks like, and the reward on his head grows every year that goes by.

“I’m fine,” he says instead. Jeong Jeong lifts his head at the sound of their voices, and their eyes lock, and Piandao feels like he’s been frozen to the spot. 

_I was just starting to get over you,_ he thinks, drinking in those familiar features because he hasn’t seen him in years but he’d know that face anywhere. _Except apparently I really, really wasn’t and I sort of already knew I never would, didn’t I? Now here you are, and I don’t know what to say._

Jeong Jeong breaks first, dipping his head and muttering Piandao’s name like it’s a curse, and he’s never known him not to look anyone in the eye and Piandao hates it. Out of spite he says his name back, too loud for the small space, and takes a seat directly across from him and pours his own cup of tea. Iroh looks between the two of them and then shrugs, ducking back out of the tent and leaving a frosty silence in his wake. 

Piandao opens his mouth - to say what, he doesn’t know, but the glare that Jeong Jeong levels on him practically drips poison and he shuts it again. He’s treating him like they’ve never met, like Piandao’s just some nobody who’s gotten in his way, and anger spikes through him. He’s been mourning and wishing and living in a strange sort of liminality for years and this is what he gets for it?

No. If Jeong Jeong’s going to make this into a fight then Piandao isn’t afraid to fight dirty, too. Even if all he wants to do is grab onto him and hold on until he can convince himself that he’s real, because he still isn’t quite convinced his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him.

He starts by taking a sip of his own tea and making deliberate, obstinate eye contact over the rim of his teacup. Jeong Jeong gives him another one of those glares, eyes chips of black ice, but when Piandao doesn’t waver he stares for another moment and then huffs and looks away. 

The longer Piandao looks the more differences he sees; the lines of his face are older and bitterer and there’s a strange sort of tension coiled in his limbs, like he’s struggling to hold back something unseen. He still carries himself with military erectness but it’s a different sort of bearing than how he remembers him from his admiral days. There’s no more pride left in the slope of his shoulders, stripped away by all those years on the run and leaving behind only a tired sort of defiance that makes Piandao want to gather him up and never let go because he never deserved to grow so old so young. 

They don’t exchange direct words the entire time, and that’s a whole world of hurt in itself, because Piandao still looks over at him out of sheer instinct for his reactions and is met every time with a face so blank it might as well be carved out of stone. But he can’t stop looking, reminding himself over and over that he’s _here,_ he’s _alive,_ and isn’t that the only thing he’s been hoping for all this time?

It’s not enough. He doesn’t know how he ever fooled himself into thinking it would be enough, but no. It’s _worse._ Jeong Jeong is right there and Piandao still loves him so much that he’d willingly shatter himself if it meant he didn’t have to bear this terrible weight on his own. He’d never considered this possibility. That he could’ve _moved on,_ when Piandao couldn’t, even if he’d tried. 

But the evidence is right there in front of him. Jeong Jeong won’t even look at him, and he’s up and out the door like a loosed arrow the minute Iroh calls the meeting adjourned. 

“What’s with him?” someone mutters, and it takes all of Piandao’s strength just to shrug.

“Don’t know.” He isn’t even lying. 

And it goes on like that. He doesn’t know how to handle himself around Jeong Jeong anymore, when he’s caught in the past like this, and around the third time it hits him. What’s missing. He doesn’t _bend_ anymore. None of the little flames fidgeting around his fingers, sparks jumping from his hands when he’s agitated; the most he’s seen him do is heat his cup of tea and even then he’s so tense that the cup shakes in his hands. 

It all comes to a head a few months later, when Jeong Jeong gives his report and mentions doing reconnaissance in a part of the Earth Kingdom that Piandao knows for a fact is a Fire Nation colony. So far he hadn’t mentioned going near Fire Nation territory, so even though Piandao still thinks he’s taking an enormous risk by being in the Order at all, he hasn’t broken their unspoken pact of silence. This, though, is a step too far.

He excuses himself right at the end of the meeting, just in time to hurry after Jeong Jeong as he makes his habitual rapid exit.

“Are you this stupid?” he hisses, grabbing his sleeve as he attempts to duck around the corner of the tent. “You’re still wanted for treason, in case you forgot.” Jeong Jeong wrenches his arm away, giving him a look so poisonous it stops him in his tracks. This close, though, he can’t hide how his hands shake, fists clenched shut at his sides. Piandao looks at him, hair chopped short, eyes veritable glaciers as he glares him down, and wonders whether he’s even looking at the same man. Whether he knows him anymore, because his fire is gone, and not just from his hands.

“Yes,” he says, steady and cold. “I remember.” Something cracks open in Piandao’s chest, because he’s spent years now dreading the next time he sees him because it’s most likely that it’ll be at his execution. And here he is just treating it all like a game, like his life is something to throw into the hands of fate and see where the dice fall.

“Then _why are you risking your life like this?”_ he shouts, fury flaring up in him like a tide. “You know the danger you’re putting yourself in by coming here.”

Distantly, he thinks it’s just one more piece of this tragedy that their first real conversation is a fight. None of this is going how it was ever meant to, how he ever imagined it might. 

“Because I want to _do something,”_ Jeong Jeong shouts right back, gaze sparking. “I’ve spent long enough hating my fire, I might as well use it for something.” His voice drops, but his eyes keep boring into Piandao’s, so brown they’re almost black even in the sunlight. “I’m not going to let anyone else have to do what I did. To myself, and to you.”

Piandao’s jaw nearly drops. _To me? This was never about me._

“When was this about me?” he repeats, feeling knocked off-balance, yanked bodily back into the past because that sounds exactly like the Jeong Jeong he knew but what is he _talking about,_ this has nothing to do with him.

“Of course it’s about you,” Jeong Jeong nearly screams, and flames erupt from his palms, great gouts of them like a wall. “You think I _wanted_ to leave you behind? You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me. You don’t deserve to run like this.”

Piandao’s next breath shatters in his lungs. That’s exactly what Jeong Jeong _would_ say, too, because he’s always been stupid and self-sacrificing and too fucking noble for his own good and Piandao has always loved him in spite of, or maybe because of it.

“Neither did you,” he chokes out after a too-long silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire still lighting Jeong Jeong’s face, hard and dangerous and devastating as the shadows flicker around him. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”

The flames wink out. 

And then they just stare at each other, breathing hard from yelling, smoke still rising from Jeong Jeong’s fingers. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Piandao grits out, because Jeong Jeong looks _gutted,_ like he’s just aged another ten years in the past minutes, and at the same time far too much like he’d had when they were younger.

Jeong Jeong says nothing, and keeps looking at him, like he’s trying to memorize his face. When he finally speaks, it’s in the smallest voice Piandao’s ever heard.

“I’m sorry.” 

“What?” Piandao says, and thinks he can be forgiven for the transgression, because Jeong Jeong has never apologized for anything in his life. 

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?” and then he’s shouting again, but it isn’t anger in his face, but heartbreak, and Piandao breaks right along with it. “I had to leave. I was just trying to protect you. I wasn’t going to make you pay for my mistakes.” And there are _so many things wrong with that_ but that isn’t what Piandao needs to be saying right now. 

He takes a step forwards, holding his hands out towards where Jeong Jeong is staring down at the ground, hair falling around his face. Jeong Jeong flinches a little when Piandao’s fingers close around his, and his skin is nearly too hot to touch but Piandao holds on anyway. 

“I forgive you,” he says, trying to infuse each word with as much sincerity as he can. And that isn’t even the truth, not really, because for him there’s nothing to forgive. 

It’s clearly what Jeong Jeong needs to hear, though. After a moment of standing stiffly, he squeezes back almost hard enough to bruise, and then essentially collapses into him. Piandao catches him, pulling him in against his chest and hot fingers twist into his tunic and there’s almost certainly going to be scorch marks on the fabric but that’s the furthest thing from his mind right now.

“I’m sorry,” Jeong Jeong says, again, barely audible where his face is pressed into Piandao’s shoulder. “You have no reason to forgive me. The things I’ve done don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“Everyone does things they regret,” Piandao says, the words stinging at the raw place somewhere at the base of his ribcage. “You think I haven’t?” _I should’ve looked harder. Should’ve started looking in the first place._

“You don’t understand,” Jeong Jeong answers, sounding bitterly distant. Piandao raises his hand and barely, tentatively brushes his fingers across his temple. 

“Then _make me understand.”_ Jeong Jeong scoffs, then shifts to put a few more inches between them and lifts his head, staring straight ahead and not meeting his eyes. 

“You don’t want to. If you knew you wouldn’t stay. I wouldn’t.”

“Jeong Jeong, I don’t _care._ I don’t care that you left. I don’t even care why. All that matters is that you’re here now. You’re here, and I’m here, and I’m not mad at you. You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want, but I will not _ever_ think less of you.”

“Agni,” Jeong Jeong mutters, finally looking up and shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve certainly not become less stubborn.”

“Neither have you,” Piandao retorts on instinct, and then immediately wants to slap his hand over his own mouth. Jeong Jeong stares at him, face inscrutable, and then a wry grin steals across his face. Piandao fights a sigh of relief - up until now their shared past has been an uncomfortable ghost, and even though this doesn’t make it any less fraught it’s good to know that not every step has a mine under it.

“You’ve got some nerve,” he says, tapping Piandao in the center of the chest, then sobers. “I still think you’re making an enormous mistake, but-”

He pauses, and takes one step forward so he’s just inside Piandao’s space. Piandao holds his breath, and nearly jumps when Jeong Jeong reaches out to touch his hand. 

“-but I missed you. I meant it when I said you were the only good thing I had. I don’t deserve you, but I want to try.” Piandao looks at him, still so spirits-damned _brave,_ and smiles, squeezing his hand between both of his own.

“How about we start with being a little more careful?” And Jeong Jeong smiles, too, small and tentative.

“I make no promises.”

They don’t talk about it - the rest of it, those missing years, what exactly they are right now - that day. Nor the next time, and not the next either. And they still argue, and Jeong Jeong is still frosty and distant some days, but Piandao had meant everything he’d said. He’s not leaving. 

And he still loves him, but it’s far more than that. First and foremost, ever since the first time Jeong Jeong had pressed his face into his shoulder and talked about prodigies and expectations, he’s sworn to be the person always in his corner, the friend he’d needed so desperately at 25 and somehow even more desperately now. It’s never going to be easy, but this is what love _is._ It’s staying, and listening, and patience, and maybe someday Jeong Jeong will ask, over a cup of tea in a very different world, if they can try again, and Piandao will say yes. 

**Author's Note:**

> ur honour,,i love them. i particularly treasure comments/kudos bc #rarepair nation if u do just know u have my undying love. and pls come yell at me about pianjeong on [tumblr](https://pianjeong.tumblr.com) <33


End file.
